Gardener's Frustrations: Spreaders and Weeds

Campanula

We are furiously trying to get the gardens cleaned up and mulched in time for opening day. While George and I were working within speaking distance during our weeding of the big garden, he would remind me of all the plants I had put in over the years that I was now having trouble removing because they were just a teensy bit aggressive. I reminded him of all his own very large plantings in a part of a garden that he put in. It made me think of our different perspectives on plants. My favorites are English garden-type plantings: overfull, lots of color. Campanulas are a favorite, but the ones I chose never seem to work in that garden. I just loved the campanula punctata 'Wedding Bells' which was supposed to be white with pink freckles (it wasn't).

This campanula is a spreading plant, and in the right place it's great. In fact, I have a friend who has had it in a corner surrounded by a stone walk on one side and her house on the other. It looks great and it's spreading habit is contained. Unfortunately, in my garden with the good soil it took over the world: It's getting under shrubs and squeezing out my old favorite, well-loved plants. I tried to be pro-active in containing it, but it was faster than I was. Last fall I took the whole thing out, and George finding a remnant, was able to remind me of my choosing this plant even though I knew its growth habit. I just wanted it, and put it in, and after a few years reconsidered, and ripped it out. We gardeners do that all the time, change things. This is not a perfect world; I ripped it out and moved on. So ends my Campanula punctata stories These are much better choices in campanula's for that space; Campanula glomerata 'Surperba', Campanula poscharskyana, Campanula persicifloia.

A serrated trowel (left) is great for weeding.

A few gardening notes: At this time of year, weeds can overcome a garden space very quickly (they seem to be growing at three times the speed of my perennials). If you are not mulching your garden, it is more difficult to keep them under control. Get them out when they are small. We have found a great gardening tool this year (the serrated trowel at left). It's really good for weeding; it looks like a fat knife with a serrated edge. I love it and we will be buying more to have here.

One last thing: if you have peonies, they don't require fertilizer for the first two or three years after planting. Then apply a trowel full of bonemeal each spring before bloom in a band 6-8 inches from the crown. Work into the soil being careful not to disturb the roots. Mulch with 2-4 inches of organic matter. If staking is necessary, place the stakes before the plants fill out.
That's all for this week! Enjoy the greening and the warming!

The First Day of Spring & the Small Details of Progress

New Retail Area Under Construction

I have come to realize that writing the Garden Blog is a lot like gardening: It has to be done every week. My son Travis gives me the nudge on the blog while weeds and bare spaces in my garden move me along there. We have so much to do this year that getting into the garden is a rare treat. Everyday I think I will get to dig up those wild onions in the peony border, grub out the running grass. A day later, the onions are taller the grass runs farther.Taking time to garden is a luxury. How can people think of it as work? I will admit, in the heat of summer when the weeds are having sway in the garden, it is a tiny bit difficult to muster up the energy to engage the enemy...but in the cool of a spring morning I still have delight in my gardening. The big garden has matured to the point where all kinds of birds and small creatures call it home. It affords them great cover from my cats, who garden with me but seem uninterested in the wildlife at that time of the morning. We're all happy just to be out in the garden in the cool morning air...but this is jumping ahead. This is spring and if I write really fast I may just get some of the dreaded onions out (my own pet peeve).

Peony

We have been having friends over for Sunday suppers the last few weeks. It is our social swan song for the season. Everyone wants to see the new pond and retail area. I get to see it with fresh eyes again. We were such innocents in regard to how we were going to set the whole thing up. Our way is to get it generally the way we want it and spend more time and energy fixing it later.  Right now, the new garden looks like a runway to me: too long and wide. We are going to change it, make it smaller with a curve around our new rain garden, (OK the rain garden we will develop as soon as we get our new main garden squared away and after we put up the next greenhouse to house the annuals for this year...are we really opening on April 7th?).

I thought I would pass along this recipe I found this week. It sounds really good and I get to use some of our fresh herbs (lucky me to have greenhouses full of them).

Strata with Goat Cheese, Tomatoes, and Herbs

• 1-tablespoon olive oil
• ½ pound stale country bread, sliced about ½-inch thick
• 2 large cloves garlic, 1 sliced in half, the other minced
• 1-pound fresh tomatoes (about 3 medium) sliced 1/3-inches thick
• 1/3 cup Gruyere cheese, grated
• 1/2 cup goat cheese, crumbled
• 1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped
• 2 teaspoons fresh thyme
• 1-teaspoon kosher salt
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• 4 large eggs
• 2 cups milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Oil a 2-quart baking or gratin dish, Rub the bread slices with garlic halves. Mix the minced garlic with the tomatoes, season with a pinch of salt and pepper, and set aside. Layer half the bread slices in the baking dish. Top with half the reserved tomatoes, half the cheeses, half the herbs and half the salt and pepper. Repeat the layers. Beat together the eggs and milk. Pour over the bread-tomato mixture. Place the dish on a baking sheet and bake for 40 or 50 minutes until puffed and browned. Serve hot or at room temperature.

That's all for this week! Time to get out in the garden and meet the first day of Spring!

New Plants, A Fresh Recipe, and The Phabulous Philly Flower Show

Our trip to the Philly Flower show was incredible. We left at nine in the morning and got back at one the next morning. There was so much to see and so many great ideas to absorb. Instead of the big displays that had lines snaking around them, I preferred the smaller, lovely little vignettes: house fronts that looked like a country cottage filled with tulips and flowers, a ruin of a stone church with vines creeping through the windows and an overgrown garden surrounding it, huge containers with the most perfect plant combinations. We made sure to go early in the week because some of the flowers fade as the week goes on. You can see some of the elaborate pictures from the flower show in this entry.

Gardening, I have to say, is a very personal journey. We now have three gardeners under one roof, and we all have something to say about every gardening issue, which, in this house, is every issue.

My garden preference is toward beautiful, vivid colors. All the new Heucheras (Frosted Violet, Lime Rickey, Marmalade, Mystic Angel, and Peach Flambe...some of these names are sounding very food-like) are my favorites at the moment. They are so dramatic at any time of the year, even without their flowers. Leaf and foliage texture, like on the Heucheras, means much more to me in my garden than just the colorful flowers by themselves. Plant texture also pulls a garden through the entire year as it changes from season to season. Grasses in the garden, for example, have great texture. My new favorite grass is Panicum "Northwind." It looked so expressive in my garden this winter and still does.  I hate to cut it back, but it's time for everything to fall as part of my spring garden clean up.
Travis loves to cook, so herbs are his plant of choice at the moment. He made a great bruschetta to go with dinner on Sunday. The recipe is very simple, but it tasted just like heaven:

It's just diced Roma tomatoes, minced garlic,  some of our Greek Columnar basil (that we should be using for cuttings at this time of year), and olive oil. Mix that in a bowl with some fresh ground pepper and kosher salt and let it sit at least a half an hour. Then toast thin slices from a baguette in an oven until they become crisp but not too brown. Finally, spoon on the tomato mixture.  A little Parmesan cheese and olive oil sprinkled on the bread before you toast it makes it even better. It's easy and fresh and almost everything comes from the garden.

That's all for this week. A few garden tips to remember: If you buy bare root shrubs this time of year, be sure to soak them in water several hours before you plant them. And now's the time to divide Hostas, liriope, daylilies, Shasta daises, astilbe, and coral-bells, before they begin to grow.

In the Cold, Spring Heats Up

Sedum 'Autumn Fire'

Can you believe it? We have one of the new greenhouses up in the new retail area thanks to George, Travis, and our good friend and excellent helper Billy. I never believed it could happen so fast, but I look out our living room window, and there it is. A good thing too because we have run out of room in every greenhouse and need the new space for more plants that we are potting up everyday. Today Trav was working on herbs (thymes, loveage, garden sage, and many more) and I was potting up perennials (hypericum, chrysanthemum, sedum 'Autumn Fire'--at right). Everything is breaking dormancy and growing so fast. Now is the time when everyday is different in the greenhouse. Seedlings jump, cutting root so fast, it seems like the plants think spring is here, and I guess for us it is.

George and I are doing something we have not done in years, we are going to the Philadelphia Flower Show, and I can't wait. The theme this year is 'Legends of Ireland' and as someone who subconsciously always seems to make a garden that looks like it belongs somewhere on one of the British Isles, I will be in heaven. I expect to come back with a whole new outlook on Irish gardens. I will keep you posted; we now have lots of new gardens to work on, and I don't see why a part of one can't be a bit Irish.

I also wanted to say last week we got in a ton (for us) of terra cotta pots. Some we are going to paint, some we will lime wash, and some we will leave terra cotta. It's really beautiful stuff, big pots, medium pots, and small posts in lots of different shapes and sizes. Something for everyone.